"I'm alone
sitting with my empty glass
my four walls
follow me through my past
I was on a Paris train
I emerged in London rain
and you were waiting there
swimming through apologies"
Berlin, "The Metro" (playing on XM this morning on my way to my first visit at 7:30 in McLean–)
–which meant I had to leave by 6:00 am to beat traffic. Yeah, I know. Ugh. I so did NOT want to wake up this morning. I couldn't stay for breakfast at the Hampton Inn, so I probably missed my first opportunity to snap a photograph of those scarily perfect eggs in the chafing dish. (Tomorrow is another day). Fortunately, I stocked up on Peanut Butter, Crackers, honeycrisp apples and cheddar cheese at Whole Foods before I left Baltimore, so I was still able to fuel up. Yes, I DID make a cup of coffee using the one-cup machine in my room, and it wasn't horrible.
It was still dark outside when I got in the car, and it reminded me that the days really are getting shorter. It also reminded me that I need to start getting to sleep earlier. All those weeks of hitting the sack at 1:30 am have taken their toll on me.
It was so surreal to hear "The Metro" on the radio. I first heard it on the late great Baltimore Alternative station WHFS in 1992, the year I started at MICA. It was already an old New Wave song by then, but it was new to me. I hardly connected that Berlin to the insipid and overplayed "Take My Breath Away" or the '84 pop of "No More Words". There was a big joke among us that Terri Nunn's line "swimming through apologies" was in reality "swimming through a pile of cheese" because that is so much more plausible, or at least more interesting.
It's always a bit nerve-racking to start your first day of visits. Today went well: One of my teachers, a MICA alum had a family emergency, but the kids were attentive and interested despite the fact that my speakers failed (I had to reset the sound preferences on my MacBook) and the film and animation clips lost much of their drama.
By my second visit I had fixed the speaker problem. The kids were completely trained on the presentation (their teacher, a MICA advocate who taught Amir Fallah, one of the alums we feature in the presentation) joked that she didn't have to prod them and remind them to pay attention because they were already transfixed!). I did eight portfolio reviews, two of which showed promise. And they were all juniors, excited to apply for Pre-College 2009!
So, by the time I had lunch on the road and ended back at my hotel, I was ready to keel over from exhaustion.
It was as if the starch had been washed out of me: the adrenaline and caffeine that had held me up since 5:15 was completely gone. So I crashed for two hours, which sort of put a dent in my plans to go to the mall. Well: Tysons Corner can wait til tomorrow after my second visit. After my gratuitous but much needed nap, hopefully I'll be able to get to sleep tonight!
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